The present invention relates to a method for providing electrical continuity of the shielding when electrically connecting shielded cable bundles, as well as the connection obtained by the implementation of this method. In addition, the invention relates to an electrical connection element appropriate to the implementation of the method.
For the transmission of information and control signals, especially in aircraft such as helicopters, electrical cable bundles, also called "harnesses", must be formed. In such harnesses, approximately 25% of the electrical cables used are shielded cables, which include one or more conductors. The shielding of these cables, which is generally joined to the overall ground of the aircraft, is necessary in order to limit interference, either by radiation of the signals which they carry, risking disturbance to the environment, or because of their sensitivity to the radiation coming from the envirornnent. Often these harnesses are themselves surrounded by a shield, this making it possible to provide an overall protection of all the cables forming said harnesses, whether the cables are shielded or unshielded.
It is easy to understand the difficulties which arise when connecting such bundles in order to provide electrical continuity of the shielding. In fact, because of the sometimes very large number of shields in a bundle, it is necessary to provide a correspondingly large number of means for establishing electrical linkage with each of said shields.
In a known manner, an electrical linking conductor is connected to the shield of each of the shielded cables, for example by means of a heat-soldering sleeve which includes a solder ring arranged beneath a heat-shrinkable tubing. These electrical linking conductors are equipped, at their free end, with a connection pin intended to come into contact with an interacting connection pin joined to the shield of another bundle, when electrically connecting these bundles.
According to another known solution, bridges between the various shields are made, also be means of electrical linking conductors, so as to electrically join them to each other, this enabling only a single connection pin to be used for the linkage to another bundle, but this requiring, however, as previously, soldered joints to be made between the shields and the associated electrical linking conductors.
These known solutions have many drawbacks. In particular, the linking conductors and the heat-soldering sleeves occupy a significant and space-consuming volume. In addition, the installation of these elements requires the execution of a certain number of operations to be carried out separately, and this is so for each shielded cable, these operations having to be carried out manually and not automatically, or at least with great difficulty, this preventing complete automation of the manufacture of the bundles.